Chapter Twenty

Andrew and Dawn stared at Xander. Clearly they weren’t expecting confirmation of their impending deaths. “Do you notice something strange about me?” asked Xander.

“Your skin does have a peculiar luminescence—” began Andrew.

“I’m missing an eye,” Xander corrected.

“Ah!” Andrew nodded sagely. “And so you are the one who sees most clearly—”

“No, I’m the one who had his eye poked out by a crazy preacher. And Buffy’s the one who died twice. And Anya died, and Tara and Joyce, and a bunch of other people too. The same thing’s going to happen to you, and I don’t know when. But a spell’s not going to help.”

“But Buffy came back—because she’s the Slayer—and we’re just red shirts,” said Dawn, bitterness tingeing her voice. She wasn’t even the Rhoda—that was Willow; Dawn was like Rhoda’s younger sister, or maybe somebody she knew at work.

Xander raised his eyebrows. “Red shirts?”

Andrew began, “On classic Star Trek, crewmembers who—”

“I know,” Xander interrupted, hiding a smile. “There have definitely been times I felt like a red shirt. But Buffy didn’t come back because she’s special, she came back because her friends brought her back. There were a whole lotta Slayers before her, and they’re all dead. Being a Slayer didn’t save Kennedy, and being a witch didn’t save Tara. The world is dangerous, and the Scoobies? Pretty much danger magnets. I don’t know how long you’re going to live, or how you’re going to die, but we can’t stop bad things from happening, not with magic. We just have to be smart.”

“Easy for you to say,” Dawn muttered sullenly.

“Yeah, I suppose you could say I have tunnel vision,” agreed Xander with a hint of asperity. Dawn flushed guiltily. “Look, Buffy wouldn’t let a nutcase blonde with a god complex hurt you, so who do you think’s gonna get past her? And you,” he added, nodding towards Andrew, “you escaped the wrath of the scariest thing I’ve ever seen—Willow out for blood. So I think both of you are one up on death and counting. And if you stop doing stupid things like summoning demons, you’re probably going to live a whole lot longer.”

“We are?” asked Andrew hopefully—looking, clearly, for a promise.

Xander couldn’t give it to him. “Look, there aren’t any guarantees. But we’re the lucky ones, right? It’s the ones who aren’t here that didn’t make it. We’re the survivors.”

Andrew looked comforted. Dawn chewed her lip, but finally nodded.

“It was a really good summoning spell,” she told Andrew wistfully.

So they’d bought it; Xander was relieved. He’d said those things because he couldn’t say anything else. He didn’t want them doing crazy things and getting themselves killed, but it was hard to escape the feeling that things couldn’t get much worse. He knew what came next, what always came next: death, misery, loss. It never changed. No matter where they lived, no matter what they did, it was always the same. It wasn’t going to change. They’d die or people they loved would die, and they’d mourn them.

Or maybe they were all dead already, and this was hell.

So why not lie to them? If it soothed them, it was worth the effort.

They’d grow up soon enough.

~*~*~*~

Stupid, worthless, pitiful little puke. What the hell was he doing here? What was he doing alive? It was that demon in the cave, having a good laugh at his expense. Get a soul and become a mopey brooder like he-who-must-not-be-named. Become human and lose his Spike-ness. Now he was just miserable William, with a bleach job and the memory of being something more.

“There you are,” said Buffy, opening the bedroom door without knocking and breezing in. Why not? he thought sourly. It was her house; he was just a visitor. “I was looking for you. Thought you were down finishing your lunch, but no go.”

“I do things besides eat,” he muttered sullenly.

“Yeah, you do the drinking thing well,” she joked. He just glared at her.

She rolled her eyes. What was he pissed at? She was the one with the boneheaded sister who conjured demons. “Considering you were almost strangled, maybe you should take it easy the rest of the day,” she suggested reasonably.

“So business as usual, I guess,” he sulked.

“What do you mean?”

Spike turned to face her with a grimace. “I was completely useless out there!”

“You weren’t useless,” Buffy insisted.

Spike snorted in disgust. “I couldn’t even take care of myself. I was saved by a fat, one-eyed—”

“Come on, Xander isn’t fat—solid, maybe, but—”

“Fat, one-eyed carpenter I wouldn’t have deigned to eat a few years ago!”

God, he was such a drama queen. And Xander wasn’t fat. And she was the one who’d saved them. “Why are you so worried? You’re older than all the rest of us anyway—you’re on your third lifetime.”

“So I should just be ready for the glue factory, eh?”

“That’s not what I meant! Jesus, what’s wrong with you? You’re not acting like yourself,” Buffy snapped.

“How would you know?” he sneered. “Like you ever paid me a damned bit of attention.”

“I paid you plenty of attention!”

“I mean while I had my clothes on!”

“God, you are such an asshole!”

“I guess the song hasn’t changed, then,” he said bitterly, throwing himself down on the bed and crossing his arms over his chest.

Buffy counted to ten. “Spike, you know what I like best about you?”

“My nice big—”

She cut him off. “You adjust. You whine, you bitch, you get drunk, but then you adjust. Look, I know you’re feeling all human-y and vulnerable compared to when you were a vampire, but you’re not weak, Spike. You’re not weak in what counts.” How could he not realize that? He was the strongest person she’d ever—

“Being human doesn’t make me weak, you make me weak!”

—wait, what? “Me?” she exclaimed in disbelief. “Is this a joke? You’re like Riley now? I have to pretend I’m not strong, so I won’t make you feel all weak and emasculated?”

Spike leapt up, outraged. “I am nothing like Captain Cardboard,” he snarled. “I’m what you make me, I’ve never been anything else! That’s all that I’ve been!”

“What?”

“I love you. Have for years. And whatever you’ve told me, I’ve believed you. I told you I could be good, you told me I was a serial killer in prison. First thing I did was chain you up. I told you I loved you, you told me I was evil and disgusting. Next thing I did was attack some girl in an alley. I told you what we had was love, you told me it was twisted, and I tried to—to—

“I’ve never been anything,” he finished thickly. “Nothing but what you’ve made me.”

God, he couldn’t believe that, could he? Could he? “That’s ridiculous,” she managed. “Like you’ve ever done what I said. Like I told you to—to—”

“Get a soul?”

“Exactly! I didn’t tell you to do that.”

“You told me you couldn’t trust me,” he said quietly.

Well, that was … after they’d already slept together. “I didn’t tell you to attack some girl in an alley—”

“You told me I was a monster.”

“I didn’t tell you to burn yourself up,” she blurted out, surprising both of them.

He reached out and tucked a stray lock behind her ear. “You told me I was a champion,” he said warmly.

“I—I didn’t mean to make you—” Buffy cut herself off. “I told you I love you,” she whispered. “You didn’t believe that.”

“I believed you,” he said softly.

“You said you didn’t—”

The look he gave her was naked, vulnerable. “I was trying to get you out of there. I was trying to get you to go on with your life— to set you free. You’d just been released from being the chosen one, having the weight of the world on your shoulders. I wanted you to be free from mourning. You’ve been tied down long enough. But I always believed you. Everything you ever told me, I believed you. You’re my north star. My southern cross.”

Buffy looked shaken. “You need your own compass. It can’t just be me.”

“Got a compass, love.” He told her, tapping his chest.

“Your soul,” she murmured.

He smiled a little. Let her think that. She was naïve still, after everything that had happened. Some part of her still believed the soul was a magic bullet, able to cure anything. He knew a soul was merely a guide, not a guarantee.

He’d had that before he’d ever regained his soul. Because of her.

But some things weren’t settled, and he needed them to be. “Buffy, do you want me to go?”

“What?”

“You don’t owe me anything. Just because you told me that all those months ago … yeah, you meant it. Doesn’t mean you gotta stand by it now.”

Buffy blinked at him. “You think I’d be with you because I felt obligated?”

Spike shrugged. “You’re the one who brought up Finn,” he said.

Buffy scowled. “I didn’t feel obligated to him!”

Spike raised one eyebrow.

Buffy wavered. “—Much!” What could she say? She’d wanted a normal life, and Riley seemed like the walking, talking personification of normal. She’d thought he was a lifeline. If she couldn’t become normal with him, who was she? What was she?

“Like I’d feel obligated to you,” she muttered. “Like you wouldn’t be following me around telling me what I should feel. And what? You thought I’d stopped loving you just because you died? I mean god, do you know me at all? If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t precisely give up just because something’s hopeless. It’s part of my charm,” she reminded him.

“Part of it,” he said with a faint smile, stroking a finger down her face.

Her insides felt shaky. God, what was it with her and guys? She’d almost lost him again, and she hadn’t even known he was unhappy. Yeah, he’d just come back from the dead, and she’d thought everything was fine. She of all people should have known better. When it came to men, her brain turned off. Which was sometimes a good thing, admittedly. She sure wouldn’t have become involved with Spike otherwise. “I love you,” she told him firmly. “Not because you’re human, and not because it’s the easy thing to do. Nothing about you—about us—is easy. But it’s what I want,” she told him, holding his hand to her face.

He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. His eyes told her everything she needed to know.

~*~*~*~

The hallway was empty when Cordelia slipped into Xander’s room. As soon as the kids had been dragged into the house and the shouting began, Cordy had slipped out. She really didn’t know either of them, and as long as they didn’t get her killed she didn’t especially care what they’d done—although she did kind of wonder that Buffy’s kid sister just went around playing with magic.

“Monkey see, monkey do,” she muttered to herself, shutting the door behind her and sizing up the room. It wasn’t like you could grow up in Sunnydale without casting a spell or being attacked by an invisible girl or dating a vampire. Or all three, if you were her.

Now, where to look? There weren’t any really reliable signs of ghostly visitations in her experience—no dripping ectoplasm or sudden cold drafts or anything—but sometimes things did make themselves apparent. Such as a book sliding across a table, or a crazy control freak murderous ghost trying to get you to kill yourself.

Dennis, thought Cordy with a pang. When she’d been all possessed by Jasmine-to-Be and didn’t have free will or a plan beyond birthing her very own superbeing, she’d given up the apartment. Later, when Cordy had come out of her coma, she’d gone back and talked the new tenants into letting her in for old times’ sake.

Dennis was silent. Either he’d moved on, somehow, or he didn’t want to talk to her.

She hadn’t gone back.

But if something was haunting Xander, she had to give it a shot. God knew nobody else had noticed anything, and Xander couldn’t find his way out of a one-room shack without a sign over the door. It was her or nobody. “Here, ghosty-ghosty-ghosty,” she sing-songed, opening the closet and peering inside. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

The voice came from behind her.

“Looking for something?” Xander asked softly.